Netanyahu Ends Threat Of A Walkout

Mideast Talks Touch-and-go

October 22, 1998|By Steven Erlanger, New York Times News Service.

WYE MILLS, Md. — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel backed down from a threat to leave the Middle East peace talks Wednesday night after Palestinian and Israeli security officials met with the director of central intelligence and apparently made enough progress on key issues to satisfy the Israelis, Palestinian officials said.

Netanyahu had threatened to leave the talks and fly home Wednesday night unless the Palestinians moved on how to change their charter to eliminate a clause calling for the destruction of Israel and on extraditing wanted Palestinians. But he continued to meet with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

CIA Director George Tenet was meeting simultaneously with Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai of Israel and Palestinian officials, including negotiator Saeb Erekat, and apparently narrowed differences sufficiently to allow Netanyahu to withdraw his ultimatum.

American officials had regarded the ultimatum, one said, as "a childish ploy" intended for Israeli domestic consumption.

Over the last week, the Americans, Israelis and Palestinians have been working to produce a final agreed-upon text of some 20 pages that lays out the phased exchange of 13 percent of West Bank land over 12 weeks in return for specific Palestinian actions to fight terrorism.

After meeting late Wednesday afternoon with Albright to go over an American document spelling out an agreement, Netanyahu issued a statement saying there "can be no agreement" unless "substantial progress" is made on two issues: a commitment by the Palestine National Council to publicly change its charter and renounce its call for the destruction of the state of Israel, and a deal to extradite Palestinians wanted for allegedly attacking Israelis.

Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, has said the Palestine national charter has been stripped of its clauses demanding the destruction of Israel, but Israelis complain that the amended charter has never been published. Arafat has offered to have an amended charter approved by the smaller Palestine Executive Council of the National Council, but the Israelis insist that the whole National Council meet for a public vote within three months.

Arafat gave President Clinton a letter assuring him that the clause had been deleted, and Americans officials say they have no reason to doubt that.

On extradition -- which the Israelis call "transfer" so as not to prematurely recognize the Palestinian Authority as a legal state -- Netanyahu wants 36 people handed over to Israel for trial. Israel charges them with involvement in attacks against Israelis, and at least some of them serve in the Palestinian police.

The Americans believe that they have worked out a satisfactory compromise. Under this plan, the CIA, which sits on a security committee with Palestinian and Israeli security chiefs, would examine the Israeli cases and decide which Palestinians should be jailed and tried, but in Palestinian courts.

The Israelis apparently find this compromise unacceptable now, although they originally accepted it. The difference appears to be sudden opposition from Israeli settlers briefed on Tuesday by Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, some officials suggested.

The Israelis also say they want firm Palestinian commitments to reduce the number of Palestinian policemen to numbers laid out in the Oslo accords, which were signed in 1993 and govern the relations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israelis also want Palestinians to confiscate unregistered, illegal weapons. The Americans believe that those issues also are essentially settled.

An agreement also is supposed to include the immediate resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks on a final peace settlement, which is supposed to be complete by May 4, when the Oslo process runs out.

Arafat has threatened to declare Palestinian statehood unilaterally the next day, and the Americans are eager to get beyond these interim issues and get both sides into serious talks on a final settlement. These talks would deal with such contentious issues as whether there will be a Palestinian state and the status of Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim.

But Israel and the Palestinians have been deadlocked for 19 months, unable to agree even to carry out the existing accords.

Even while Albright and Netanyahu were meeting Wednesday afternoon, Israeli officials were busily and visibly bringing packed suitcases out onto the lawn.

First the Israelis said they would leave at 10 p.m. Then they said Netanyahu's plane would take off at midnight, then at 1 a.m.

A senior American official said the Israeli drama was crude and that Albright was "bemused" by the display. But it was a dramatic example of the brinkmanship American officials expected during the endgame of these tortuous negotiations.

"My betting is that will turn out to be a childish ploy," the official said. "I wouldn't think their private posture is quite as stark as their public posture."

American officials made it clear that in their view the Palestinians had done enough to keep the talks going, and that the Americans would put the onus for any failure on the Israelis.

Netanyahu telephoned the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and asked them for support and "political cover" with American Jews and the Clinton White House if he had to leave, officials said.

A rupture of the talks would cause a serious dispute between the United States and Israel just a few weeks before Clinton faces midterm elections for Congress.